A-Infos (en) ABC forum interview: Online Forums and Building Movement, by Guest - Linchpin Saturday

Anarchistblackcat.org is a moderated discussion board, set up by platformist 
anarchists. It was set up for a number of different reasons, here one of the 
moderators gives us her take on why the site was set up and what role it can 
play in our movement. ---- Firstly I live on an island which has no anarchist 
culture. There aren't a whole lot of anarchists here. Usually to meet other 
anarchist I have to travel abroad to bookfairs or conferences. I do a bit of 
that because its very useful talking to other anarchists. You soon learn that 
although our local conditions are different, in lots of ways we are fighting 
similar battles. We face similar problems. ---- By talking to other anarchists 
we can learn about other ways of doing things, share experiences and maybe avoid 
continually re-inventing the wheel. I first started to post on forums a couple 
of year ago, and at first I was very excited by the possibility of having this 
type of discussion without having to get on a boat or a train. But then I 
quickly discovered that the level of discussion on most forums was very low. 
There was a lot of bullying and play ground behavior.

Online discussions were much much worse than anything I had experienced in real 
life. I then became worried that for new people, just coming across these sites 
by accident, would think that this is what anarchism was all about. I think to 
build a new society we have to be able we to listen to other people, to learn 
from them. We have to be willing to experiment, even if that means we might make 
mistakes. We have to be able to convince people that anarchist ideas are useful 
and make sense. Instead, a lot of online forums seem to be based on cliches 
trading insults and point scoring. It's a million miles away from the type of 
free questioning dialogue that I think has to form the basis of any anarchist 
society.

So I thought to myself, you're an anarchist, experiment, try and build a 
different type of virtual anarchism. So I did, I got some friends together and 
we set up anarchist black cat. It's early days yet, but I think so far it 
seems to be working the way I imagined it would. Fingers crossed it will 
continue to succeed.

Launch Statement of Anarchist Black Cat

Ever wished for an anarchist discussion board dominated by an exchange of argued 
out political views rather than insults? So did we, so we decided to do 
something about it.

Ever wished for an anarchist discussion board dominated by an exchange of argued 
out political views rather than insults? So did we, so we decided to do 
something about it.

Inspired by the Organise discussion list of the mid 1990s (the first serious 
anarchist discussion list) and Anarkismo.net, we have launched 
AnarchistBlackCat. We are building a home for serious anarchist discussion and 
strong moderation of anything that falls below this according to a set of 
detailed, transparent and publicly available rules.ceremony.

http://www.anarchistblackcat.org
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